The History of Disability in Art - Bowdoin College Museum of Art

The History of Disability in Art

Faith Ringgold

American (Harlem, New York, 1930)

Faith Ringgold is a mixed media artist who creates narratives in intricate quilts, paintings, and sculptural works. As a young girl, she learned how to sew and manipulate fabric from her mother. In 1950, she enrolled at the City College of New York where she was disallowed to major in visual arts but instead was told she could major in art education. During this time Ringgold studied under Robert Gwathmey and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. She was then introduced to Robert Blackburn, an African American printmaker, with whom she would collaborate later in her career. Ringgold’s travels to West Africa in the 1970s would have great influence on her mask-making, doll painting work, and sculptures. Through her artwork, Ringgold commented on racial issues in the United States, evoking truthful imagery of a Black and white America.

The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles, 1996

FAITH RINGGOLD (American, born 1930), The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles, 1996, lithograph, 22 in. x 29 3/8 in. (55.88 cm x 74.61 cm), Gift of Julie L. McGee, Class of 1982, 2011.33.2. © 2021 Faith Ringgold / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Courtesy ACA Galleries, New York

Faith Ringgold (American, born 1930)

lithograph

22 in. x 29 3/8 in. (55.88 cm x 74.61 cm)

Gift of Julie L. McGee, Class of 1982, 2011.33.2. © 2021 Faith Ringgold / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Courtesy ACA Galleries, New York

Made after the quilt painting of the same name, The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles depicts several prominent African American women constructing a sunflower-patterned quilt. Standing among a field of sunflowers, the women who hold the quilt are relatively well known in American history – Madam CJ Walker, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Ella Baker. Willia Marie Simone, the fictional ninth figure in the lower left, is included as a young woman who journeys throughout Europe to become an artist. In this lithograph, artist Faith Ringgold celebrates the contributions of Black women to abolition, civil rights, and women’s rights while centering the collective, traditionally female art of quilting. Black women since the nineteenth century have participated in the tradition of quilting, resourcefully creating elaborate and abstract quilt compositions.

Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine

Bowdoin College Museum of Art